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Imagine, for example, that a researcher conducts an experiment on the effect of daily exercise on stress. The dependent variable, stress, is a construct that can be operationalized in different ways. For this reason, the researcher might have participants complete the paper-and-pencil Perceived Stress Scale and also measure their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. If the researcher finds that the different measures are affected by exercise in the same way, then he or she can be confident in the conclusion that exercise affects the more general construct of stress. In addition, the efficiency of a factorial experiment depends in part on the extent to which higher order interactions are not found. If interactions are found, and inferential statistics must be used to unpackage such interactions, such simple effects tests would require examining the effects of ICs in only subgroups of the sample.
1: Factorial Designs

Such studies are extremely common, and there are several points worth making about them. First, non-manipulated independent variables are usually participant variables (private body consciousness, hypochondriasis, self-esteem, gender, and so on), and as such, they are by definition between-subjects factors. For example, people are either low in hypochondriasis or high in hypochondriasis; they cannot be tested in both of these conditions. Second, such studies are generally considered to be experiments as long as at least one independent variable is manipulated, regardless of how many non-manipulated independent variables are included. Third, it is important to remember that causal conclusions can only be drawn about the manipulated independent variable. For example, Schnall and her colleagues were justified in concluding that disgust affected the harshness of their participants’ moral judgments because they manipulated that variable and randomly assigned participants to the clean or messy room.
Minitab Example for Centrifugal Contactor Analysis
A new multi-factor multi-objective strategy based on a factorial presence-absence design to determine polymer additive ... - ScienceDirect.com
A new multi-factor multi-objective strategy based on a factorial presence-absence design to determine polymer additive ....
Posted: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 02:33:51 GMT [source]
This framework can be generalized to, e.g., designing three replicates for three level factors, etc. In the 2 × 3 example above, the degrees of freedom for the two main effects and the interaction — the number of columns for each — are 1, 2 and 2, respectively. Similar definitions hold for interactions of more than two factors.
Interaction Effects

It probably would not surprise you, for example, to hear that the effect of receiving psychotherapy is stronger among people who are highly motivated to change than among people who are not motivated to change. This is an interaction because the effect of one independent variable (whether or not one receives psychotherapy) depends on the level of another (motivation to change). Schnall and her colleagues also demonstrated an interaction because the effect of whether the room was clean or messy on participants’ moral judgments depended on whether the participants were low or high in private body consciousness.
In dummy coding, a binary variable, a reference group (e.g., a control group) is assigned a value of zero (0) and the other group (e.g., an active treatment group) is assigned a value of one (1). Effect coding of a binary variable is the same except that the zero for the reference group is replaced with −1. A research design should reflect the goals of the research endeavor. In general, if the major goal of a study is to contrast directly one “treatment” with another treatment (e.g., a control treatment), then an RCT is usually the best choice. The statistical analyses would reveal whether the experimental treatment “package” differs in effects from the usual care treatment.
The primary results of this study were that participants in the messy room were in fact more disgusted and made harsher moral judgments than participants in the clean room—but only if they scored relatively high in private body consciousness. For instance, relative to some complex interactions, main effects are more easily interpreted (Collins et al., 2014); a factor’s main effects are interpretable even when it interacts with other factors. When effect coding is used, each effect is orthogonal to every other effect in the analysis model (orthogonal when the n’s are equal in each experimental condition, and nearly orthogonal when the n’s differ by a modest amount).
1. Multiple Dependent Variables¶
The factors that have significant effects are shown in red and the ones without significant effects are shown in black. The further a factor is from the blue line, the more significant effect it has on the corresponding response. For wt% methanol in biodiesel, RPM is further from the blue line than pressure, which indicates that RPM has a more significant effect on wt% methanol in biodiesel than pressure does. Analysis was performed on the DOE study to determine the effects of each factor on the responses. Only first order terms were included in the analysis to create a linear model. Pareto charts for both wt% MeOH in biodiesel and number of theoretical stages are shown below.
Extension to a 3 Factor Model
Similarly, the two contrast vectors for B depend only on the level of factor B, namely the second component of "cell", so they belong to the main effect of B. Other terms for "treatment combinations" are often used, such as runs (of an experiment), points (viewing the combinations as vertices of a graph, and cells (arising as intersections of rows and columns). It is this course author's experience many times you can find a transformation when you have this kind of pattern.
Therefore, finding that several combinations of ICs yield promising effects is compatible with the goal of a screening experiment, which is to distill the number of ICS to those holding relatively great promise. In keeping with this, the data in Figure 1 suggest that we can winnow potentially promising combinations from 16, to 3. Which one of those three might be deemed most promising might be addressed via other criteria (effects on abstinence, costs, and so on) and in a follow-up RCT. Thus, investigators must decide if they wish to directly compare two treatment conditions (and these may be multicomponential) with one another, without the results being affected by the presence of other experimental factors being manipulated. Most complex correlational research, however, does not fit neatly into a factorial design. Instead, it involves measuring several variables, often both categorical and quantitative, and then assessing the statistical relationships among them.
Someone looking at this graph alone would have to guesstimate the main effects. If we made a separate graph for the main effect of shoes we should see a difference of 1 inch between conditions. Similarly, if we made a separate graph for the main effect of hats then we should see a difference of 6 between conditions. The main disadvantage is the difficulty of experimenting with more than two factors, or many levels. A factorial design has to be planned meticulously, as an error in one of the levels, or in the general operationalization, will jeopardize a great amount of work.
With t-tests, with compared two different groups (which can be considered one IV with two levels). Sometimes, those groups were unrelated (independent t-test) and sometimes they were related (dependent t-test). Sometimes those IV levels were unrelated (Between Groups ANOVA) and sometimes they were related (Repeated Measures ANOVA, sometimes called Within-Groups ANOVA). Make plots to determine the main or interaction effects of each factor.
Other useful exploratory analysis tools for factorial experiments include main effects plots, interaction plots, Pareto plots, and a normal probability plot of the estimated effects. In addition to looking at the employment sector, the researchers also look at gender. In this example, the employment sector and gender of the graduates are the independent variables, and the starting salaries are the dependent variables. So, for example, a 4×3 factorial design would involve two independent variables with four levels for one IV and three levels for the other IV. Another common approach to including multiple dependent variables is to operationalize and measure the same construct, or closely related ones, in different ways.
There are situations where you have unequal variation for maybe a known reason or unknown reason, but if you have repeated observations and you can get weights, then you can do a weighted analysis. The tell-tale pattern that is useful here is an interaction that does not have crossing lines - a fanning effect - and it is exactly the same pattern that allows the Tukey model to fit. In both cases, it is a pattern of interaction that you can remove by transformation. If we select a transformation that will shrink the large values more than it does the small values and the overall result would be that we would see less of this fan effect in the residuals.
For instance, assume that a design has three factors; two are medication factors (e.g., varenicline, on/off, in one factor and NRT product [nicotine patch vs. nicotine lozenge], in a second factor). The third factor is an adherence factor (i.e., an automated medication counter with counseling, on/off). Thus, this experiment would address which type of NRT exerts additive or interactive effects when used with varenicline, and whether the adherence intervention exerts main or interactive effects. Obviously the investigator must make the intervention relevant to each medication type, but such adjustment raises questions. Is the adherence intervention different enough in its various forms (across medications) so that it no longer constitutes a single, coherent component?
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